Friday, January 11, 2013

Louise Michel, "Why We Are Anarchists" (1891)

WHY WE
ARE ANARCHISTS.

Our
Comrade Louise Michel has received the following letter from a stranger; we insert
the letter and a translation of her answer.

Dear
Miss: — You have been represented in various periodicals and newspapers, (which
I have read at various times) as the leader of the school of Anarchists and of
all those who wish to undermine the national Governments of civilized
countries. I write to ask you whether you have not been misrepresented upon
this matter, and if not, how and by what system of reasoning have you come to
believe that we shall reach a perfect state of Society by destroying all Government,
than by helping or forcing’ Governments to make laws which shall better the social
condition of the people. I apologise very much for troubling you and remain,

Yours
Sincerely, S. B.

I should
have been satisfied with answering by post the question which Mr. S. B. has put
in such an open handed manner, if this question was only asked by one man and
if my views only were to be expressed.

We are
Anarchists because it is absolutely impossible to obtain justice for all in any
other way than by destroying institutions founded on force and privilege.

We
cannot believe that improvement is possible, if we still keep up the same
institutions, now more rotten than in the past, or if we merely replace those
whose iniquities are known by new men.

These latter
become in their turn what the others were, or else become barren.

After
the gradual changes of past centuries the hour has come when evolution cannot
be separated from revolution, as in all birth they must be accomplished
together. You can no more retard the birth of a system than you can that of
living being.

In what
would you that we should help those who govern—their work being only exploitation
and wholesale murder—it has never been otherwise: the reason for the existence
of a state is nothing but the accomplishment of some crime or other in order to
assure the domination of a privileged class.

An equal
division of wealth would also be as mad as capitalism is criminal: to expect
any amelioration of misery by modifying laws is a piece of stupidity of which
we are not capable: we have seen the work of men whose illusions have only been
able to perpetuate misery — millions of years being insufficient for the least
amelioration of the lot of the workers. We can now see the fin-de-siècle
cutthroats and assassins. That is better. We can see power on trial — we can
judge it for what it is worth.

The land
which belongs to all can no more be divided than the light which also belongs
to all.

When
free groups of men will use for the general welfare machines which reduce the
hours of labour to a few, and in many forms of production the toil of rough
work will be annihilated, there will remain for the intellect of the time, some
time for the pursuit of art and science; and when men are delivered from the
struggle for existence, they will also be delivered from crime and grief.

The
ideal alone is the truth — it is the measure of our horizon. Time was when the
ideal was to live without eating an other up. Is it not so still under another
form which exists in the so-called civilized countries where the exploiter eats
up the exploited? Do not the people in nocks fertilize the soil by their sweat
and blood?

That is
what we want to destroy — this annihilation — this eating of man by an other
man.

The old
bogie of “Society” is dead. It is time that she was buried with the worms
burrowing in her vitals, in order that the air may be pure for young Anarchy,
which will be order and peace under freedom instead of order kept by the murder
of the multitudes.

How did
I become an Anarchist? This is how. It was during a four months voyage for New
Caledonia while looking at the infinity of the sea and of the sky — feeling how
miserable living beings are when taken individually — how great is the ideal
when it goes beyond time and beyond the hecatombs as far as the new aurora.

There I
deeply felt how each drop of water of the waves was but microscopic, but how
powerful it was when joined to the ocean.

So also
ought each man to be in humanity. As for the third question I am not the least
bit in the world “chief” of the “International school”; the word “directrix”
which my comrades have joined to my name is worth nothing either, for each of
us gives freely according to his conscience the courses of instruction with
which he or she has charged him or her self.

What
would you have? Our tongue is poor, the words are old and so they ill express
new ideas.

And
finally is it not time that our limited tongues should fall into the ocean of
speech and of human thought? What will be the language of mankind delivered to
the new Aurora — Anarchy!